Tour-It
The Smartphone has effectively replaced the tourist's camera, and now Augmented Reality is poised to transform the museum experience. Augmented Reality offers a compelling 3D information interface layered seamlessly over a real world perspective from your Smartphone camera viewpoint. 3D computer objects can appear with lifelike realism, with highlights, shadows, and reflections that shift with your moving view. The advent of real time photorealistic computer modeling
that can be readily delivered over a widely used device creates a timely opportunity for Augmented Reality to realize its full potential, and many new software AR applications are being imagined, developed, and introduced into a rapidly growing market. Immersive experiences are useful for so many types of activities that the virtual interaction capabilities of Augmented Reality will be actively utilized. DDA's Tour-It AR application concept is one such likely starting point.
Need
Museum going is a much loved activity around the world, and many museums have adopted the use of audio support technology to enhance the museum going experience. With DDA's Tour-It, Augmented Reality can take the idea much further. The advancements in Augmented Reality can turn the museum going experience into a dynamic multimedia adventure for children on field trips, tourists traveling to both famous and obscure places, and for anyone interested in adding more in-depth enhancements only AR can provide.
Benefit
Just as the availability of interactive maps has made navigation easier, Augmented Reality has the potential to make the museum going experience more memorable and dynamic for students. Tour-It gives educators valuable new tools for incorporating immersive technologies into their curriculum and is highly useful for archaeologists, art historians, and curators around the world.
Concept
When you access Tour-It on your Smartphone, iPad, or hands-free glasses type device, the viewpoint can be customized with a layer of computer data. When visiting an art gallery, 3D computer objects like sculptures can be introduced into the space for comparison with the real sculptures in the sculpture gallery. Multiple virtual paintings can be compared with existing ones and switched out with ease. You can alter the surroundings as well as the objects, with landscape features that can take the gallery of objects into a rainforest, or recreate an ancient city around the discovered artifacts. Support information can also be introduced, as graphics floating in the space, as audio information like a gallery tour, 3D avatar guides, and directional arrows and indicators to take you through complex itineraries.
DDA is an award winning developer of mobile software applications, and our first project for Augmented Reality was launched in 2009. Now that the popularity of the Smartphone makes the widespread use of AR more feasible, we are ideally situated to guide our clients through the steps necessary to make software that makes a difference. Our team of writers, graphic designers, multimedia specialists, software designers, and programmers can take a concept from its inception to its completion and incorporate any type of specialized requirements. We are unique for the range of services we provide under one roof. Our diverse skill set enables us to take on any custom software development challenge, whether it includes e-learning portals, database management, Virtual Games, or Augmented Reality. If you would like to hear more about Tour-It, or if you would enjoy a tour through the range of development ideas we have for AR, we'd be only too happy to show you around.
